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badger
05-Jan-07, 19:31
I've had a few emails with a message saying they're protected by Spamfighter, which is free for Outlook and OE users. Looks good but before I download does anyone know anything about it? Recommend? Not?

blueivy
05-Jan-07, 20:47
I've had a few emails with a message saying they're protected by Spamfighter, which is free for Outlook and OE users. Looks good but before I download does anyone know anything about it? Recommend? Not?

It does say that some 'useful features' are removed in the free version but doesn't say what all of them are. It also says that a short text ad is displayed in your Email client and the 'Im protect by Spamfighter' tag is added to all of your outgoing messages. It doesn't say where the text ads come from (ie. is it just SpamFighter's own ads which I could live with or do they sell advertising to other companies).

Looks very much like SpamNet from Cloudmark which is a good anti-spam product and functions exactly the same way (ie. you report emails as spam and others are then protected from it).

Finally it also says:


SPAMfighter has partnered up with Microsoft to build the strongest, safest, and most effective anti spam tool on the market.
But doesn't elaborate on how they've partnered with Microsoft.

I'm dubious about the claims (and non-information) but it has some good reviews so I'd say give it a go and see for yourself.

badger
06-Jan-07, 11:17
The message I've seen so far added to emails is a bit long and annoying but harmless

I am using the free version of SPAMfighter for private users.
It has removed 554 spam emails to date.
Paying users do not have this message in their emails.
Try SPAMfighter (http://www.spamfighter.com/) for free now!
I've had a few messages from the same person in the past few days and the number of spams removed changes, if that means anything.

I wondered about the MS claim. Anyway I'll give it a go and see what happens :eek:

blueivy
06-Jan-07, 11:36
The message I've seen so far added to emails is a bit long and annoying but harmless

I've had a few messages from the same person in the past few days and the number of spams removed changes, if that means anything.

I wondered about the MS claim. Anyway I'll give it a go and see what happens :eek:

Hi badger,

The tagline on the email would annoy me. But that's just me.

The number of spam messages probably increases as it deletes more and more from your friends email.

I think the Microsoft claim may be because one of them is an MCP (at least they have the MCP logo on the header of their site). I'm also an MCP and a Microsoft Partner, however I don't claim to have 'partnered' with Microsoft. I suppose it's all in the wording and the interpretation :-)

I provide antispam software to customers so I'd be interested to know how you get on.

Stumurf
06-Jan-07, 15:58
a free and easy tip, for future refernence, do not even open any spam, as opening the message can alert that you have an active address and can then be passed on to other spammers, which will ugely increase the amount you recieve.
having the auto preview/open turned on in an email client eliminates this option.

sadly there is no guaranteed spam buster in my opinion, its better to have one email account you use with friends and family and a few others (ones like, yahoo, hotmail, gmail, all free and easy to create) that you use when signing into or up for anything online incase of the address being sold or used by spammers.
By doing this you have a clean line of communication for people you know and if the other email addresses get too clogged up by spam, you can just delete the old email address, (or let it expire, by not signing in) and create a new one. then update any online accounts tied to the old email address with the new one you create. (you will have to keep a record of any accounts you tie to the address, but its easy to keep the confirmation emails in a folder you usually recieve when sgning up to anything)

Its Bit long winded but the benefits of having a clean secure email address in this day and age is priceless. in my opinion anyway...

blueivy
06-Jan-07, 18:16
having the auto preview/open turned on in an email client eliminates this option.

Hi Stumurf,

If you're talking about Outlook and Outlook Express, I'm afraid that isn't the case at all. Having autopreview turned on is exactly the same as opening the message in most cases - remember auto preview is a look at the message as a whole.

What you need to do is ensure you have images and links turned off when you either use auto-preview or open a message. That way the images that track you and the links that you can click on accidentally are turned off.


sadly there is no guaranteed spam buster in my opinion, its better to have one email account you use with friends and family and a few others (ones like, yahoo, hotmail, gmail, all free and easy to create) that you use when signing into or up for anything online incase of the address being sold or used by spammers.

That is a good way of doing things if you and your friends can keep your email address a secret. All it takes is for one of them to get infected by a piece of malware that will steal addresses from the address book or inbox and bang, you've no longer got a secure email address.


By doing this you have a clean line of communication for people you know and if the other email addresses get too clogged up by spam, you can just delete the old email address, (or let it expire, by not signing in) and create a new one. then update any online accounts tied to the old email address with the new one you create. (you will have to keep a record of any accounts you tie to the address, but its easy to keep the confirmation emails in a folder you usually recieve when sgning up to anything)

An alternative to this that I've used for years is Spamgourmet (http://www.spamgourmet.com) which creates quick and throwaway email address for use.


Its Bit long winded but the benefits of having a clean secure email address in this day and age is priceless. in my opinion anyway...

The only way I would imagine you can guarantee a clean email address these days is to not have an email address in the first place. In the same fashion the only way to have a guaranteed secure PC is to not switch it on (and then it's still open to physical attack!).

badger
06-Jan-07, 18:58
Have to agree on email addresses. I did once ditch one completely when the spam got out of hand but it's a pain if you're registered with lots of companies. The annoying thing about the spam I get is that it's all to my personal address and nothing to the one I used on websites but having read what Paul's said about that I can see that nothing is safe. Will download Spamfighter soon and report back (not tonight).

blueivy
06-Jan-07, 19:06
Have to agree on email addresses. I did once ditch one completely when the spam got out of hand but it's a pain if you're registered with lots of companies. The annoying thing about the spam I get is that it's all to my personal address and nothing to the one I used on websites but having read what Paul's said about that I can see that nothing is safe. Will download Spamfighter soon and report back (not tonight).

Something that a lot of people do is put/post their email address in a public forum (such as this one) in a message in plain view or they put it on their websites. Spammers harvest these email addresses using the same type of spidres that search engines use. They crawl sites looks for what an email looks like (email address all look the same - they have an @ in them and all have a .xx or combination of that at the end). They then add this to their databases and the junk starts.

Good forums (such as this one) protect your email address in the control panel, so no worries there. What I'm meaning is people who say something like:

'send it to me at joe@bloggs.com'

The spiders see this and add it to their database.

Sorry to anybody whose email address is joe@bloggs.com by the way :)

Stumurf
06-Jan-07, 20:44
Hi Stumurf,

If you're talking about Outlook and Outlook Express, I'm afraid that isn't the case at all. Having autopreview turned on is exactly the same as opening the message in most cases - remember auto preview is a look at the message as a whole.


Sadly its my fault for not expresing myself properly...

What i meant was by having the auto preview option switched on elimnates my piece of advice, not the problem of spam....

I did look at that changing sentence before posting.... i knew i would get pulled up for it.. :)

Stumurf
07-Jan-07, 14:24
An alternative to this that I've used for years is Spamgourmet (http://www.spamgourmet.com/) which creates quick and throwaway email address for use.

i have just taken a look at this and its looks fantastic...
many thanks for opening my eyes to this one, i will try it out and this could save me some earache from a few of my older family and friends who complain of having to use more than one email address.

badger
08-Jan-07, 14:34
Sadly its my fault for not expresing myself properly...

What i meant was by having the auto preview option switched on elimnates my piece of advice, not the problem of spam....

I did look at that changing sentence before posting.... i knew i would get pulled up for it.. :)

Bitten the bullet and downloaded it. Interesting. First thing it tells you to do is switch off the Preview Pane. Next thing is to clean existing folders so did this to my Deleted folder just to see what happened. Guess what? It selected 14 of my outgoing emails as spam :eek: . Have now put myself into my white list. Needless to say it was my bt address that it didn't like.

blueivy
08-Jan-07, 14:39
Bitten the bullet and downloaded it. Interesting. First thing it tells you to do is switch off the Preview Pane. Next thing is to clean existing folders so did this to my Deleted folder just to see what happened. Guess what? It selected 14 of my outgoing emails as spam :eek: . Have now put myself into my white list. Needless to say it was my bt address that it didn't like.

I find that weird. Generally anti-spam software doesn't class anything you send as spam. In fact some of them auto-whitelist addresses you send to because 'you don't send spam'. There are automated bots that will infect your system and send mail to people in your address book which would be spam, however they would generally tidy up after themselves so you'd never know about it (and certainly wouldn't leave them in the Sent Items).

All of the anti-spam software I've come across all need to be taught how you use your system and what you consider spam (remember spam is a personal perspective). You generally do that by showing where emails are that are NOT spam (classed as HAM believe it or not) and tell it where you have spam (if you have any) so that it can start to get an idea.

Give it a few days and see how it goes. During those first few days it may be a lot of work of teaching it, however it will get easier ;)

badger
12-Jan-07, 19:46
After that original hiccup this seems to be OK and certainly much easier to use and less complicated than others I've seen. Basically it puts anything it thinks is spam into a spam folder so you can check to make sure it's not rejecting stuff you want. It has its own menu bar with Block and Unblock buttons and it's very simple to import your address book, or selections from it, as a white list. Admittedly I'm still using the pro version which you get free for 1 month so don't yet know what the free standard version is like. If I remember I'll report back then.